Shopify Speed Optimization: {8 Tried & Trusted Ways To Increase Page Speed}

You must have come across an idiom, “Slow and Steady Win the Race.” But unfortunately, this doesn’t go well in the situation of an eCommerce Shopify store.

The thing is, when it comes to search engine optimization, fast page speed and site performance are essential components to success in the e-commerce world.

Coming to the facts, around 33% of Americans use Shopify for their online purchasing.

With this, it is clear: if you also have an eCommerce Shopify website, then it has to be responsive enough to avoid bad user engagement, a high bounce rate, and losing any chance of sales opportunities.

So, this blog will take you through how to work on Shopify speed optimization and exceptionally increase your Shopify page speed.

Let’s begin:

Can I have your attention? Before moving to the main part, have a look over here…

One of my trusted clients who have an eCommerce Shopify website – taniusa.com, was struggling in increasing the Shopify speed score of his website.

This was developing a bad user experience for his website, the bounce rate got increased, and sales drastically dropped!

As you can see earlier, when testing the site performance of the website, it came out to be 66, which is the place to work on.

However, let’s focus over here…

Now, after I worked on his website, I came across several issues that needed to be improvised. And when I implemented Shopify site speed optimization, his website speed improved. Below is the result after Shopify speed optimization…

See! The performance score increased from 66 to 76 for mobile devices and went up to 88 for desktops.

After seeing this, you also must be curious… Do you wanna know how I did that? To know how to speed up Shopify website, you have to read further.

Read More: A Complete Guide To Shopify SEO

But here you may ask…

Why Go For Shopify Site Speed Optimization?

I do have an answer to your question!

Think like this, when you visit any website to purchase any online product, and you find that the website has a very slow loading speed, what would you do? Just bounce back and go to any other site.

I’m damn sure anyone would do, just the same! And think what if the same happens with your website…Ultimately sales may drop and revenues go down and down…That’s why you must look for speed optimization. 

Here, I brought up a few critical aspects that might tell how important it is to speed up Shopify site…

1. Higher Rate Of Conversions

Shopify site speed optimization can make an ever-lasting effect on your conversion rate. Improving your page speed by just 1-second can turn the game all over for you.

This example perfectly fits here,

Customers visit your Shopify site > Site is well-optimized with less loading time > Customers easily find what they need > Purchased the product.

And this goes on and on as soon as your website is performing well in terms of loading speed.

2. Reduces Bounce Rate

As soon as the incoming customers find your Shopify website engaging and fast, which is due to Shopify speed optimization, they tend to spend more time discovering a variety of products on your website that naturally would reduce the bounce rate of your site.

3. Enhances Customer Loyalty 

You must have heard this, “it is much easier to make existing customers repurchase your products than the ones who are new.” 

This is where Shopify site speed optimization comes into play, which states, the more fast is the loading speed of your website, the more likely the repurchasing by the customers.

But if your Shopify page speed is slow… the effects may result in abandoning the purchase, and customers going to other sites. The below image clearly tells the customers’ engagement with a slow-speed website.

4. Increased Google Rankings

Did you know, Google, the most popular search engine, considers site speed as one of its ranking factors? This would likely help you to attract new customers as well. For that, you have to go for Shopify speed optimization.

How To Work On Shopify Speed Optimization 

Now, I’m going to tell you 8 tried and trusted ways to increase the Shopify site speed of your website.

Choose A Lightweight Shopify Theme

Consider it or not, the Shopify website theme is the core element that affects your Shopify speed score.

That is why it is mandatory to choose or download a quick and responsive Shopify theme. Customized themes, when edited, can grow the size of the themes that can affect the overall performance of your website and leads to failed Shopify speed optimization.

After choosing the theme, you can quickly run it in the Google Page Insights tool and see the suggestions it gives to make your chosen theme even more faster.

Compress The Images

Next up, I have is optimizing images. Look, images can be the backbone of any eCommerce Shopify website. These are what make your products appealing and worth buying.

However, it is one of the most crucial elements when it comes to Shopify speed optimization that you can not compromise when speeding up your website.

And how you can optimize the images, is by compressing them. Here’s an example, Images occupying a wider area on your website can be a drawback for Shopify site speed optimization.

The reasons are: 

• Large images with high storage tend to turn down the page load speed.
• Images without proper format tend to lower the load speed because they take a high to fully appear.

So, to ease up, you can add the following image formats to your Shopify site:

I. JPEG – Ideal for products, banners, and slideshows.

II. Progressive JPEG

III. PNG – Ideal for logos, icons, trims, and borders.

IV. GIF and WEBP – GIFs are automatically converted to WEBP to improve the website’s performance.

Read More: Everything You Need To Know About Image Optimization

Use Static Images Instead Of GIFs

GIFs can be beneficial for SEO in the same way that all skillfully created images can: they can encourage clicks and keep visitors on a page. Visitors like engaging animated images, a lot!

But when it is a matter of Shopify site speed optimization, GIFs might affect the Shopify page speed of your Shopify SEO website.

Keep in mind that a website’s performance may suffer if it contains too much dynamic content compared to a site without it.

To not face such a situation, you should go for static images. Though GIFs support both image types (static and animated), but it is more often considered to use static images.

Using more of such images can really boost up the loading speed of your Shopify site.

Apply Lazy Loading For Images

Lazy loading is nothing, but appearing of the right data at the right time. Confused? 

Let me make it simple for you, the word “lazy” in simple English is doing work very slowly or avoiding it for a longer period. In the same way, LAZY LOADING is the loading of pages or images when they are needed.

It is more often that instead of loading everything all of a sudden, it can appear when the user needs them.

For example, see the video below, 

In the above video, you might see how the resources on my website tend to appear. It is not like each and everything pops up as soon as the page loads. Instead, each resource ( images, button, text) loads timely when the user reaches there.

Now, you may question, why in the world do you have to go for lazy loading images? 

To answer this, I would say that, with lazy landing, you can create a better engagement of your Shopify website with your customers. 

This can literally take the resources into notice when the customers scroll down the page. This compels them to scroll down, as without scrolling the images won’t appear.

And one of the main advantages of lazy loading is…

I. Improved Shopify Site Speed Performance 

With Shopify speed optimization, the overall performance of your website can rise as lazy loading would enable a lesser amount of images to load at a particular time. Fewer resource requests result in fewer download bytes. This makes the page more usable as compared to one without lazy loading.

Limit The Third-Party Javascript

There is a good chance for you to speed up Shopify site loading speed by optimizing javascript delivery. How can do this? By limiting or minifying them…

Minification is the procedure for eliminating all extra characters from JavaScript source code without affecting the functionality of the code. 

Here, whitespace, comments, and semicolons should all be eliminated, and shorter variable names and functions should be used.

Look how it is done…

The above image shows an 8-liner code. But after limiting the third-party javascript, it comes out to be only a single-liner code, here.

Pros: It would really speed up your Shopify website, which may also improve user experience and ultimately make a positive impact on users as well as search engines.

Migrate Tracking Codes To Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a feature included in Google Analytics to track your visitors, add codes, and measure conversions.

As the name suggests Google Tag Manager, is a system to integrate various tags from various platforms such as Facebook or Linkedin to ensure the control of those tags.

To make it simple for you, it is a process to directly implement the codes, snippets, and tracking tags into GTM to speed up Shopify site.

Integrate AMP Pages On the Website

Another way to resolve the issue of slow speed performance and to develop Shopify page speed optimization, you may go for Accelerated  Mobile Pages or AMP. It is a framework that allows you to deliver mobile-friendly pages to speed up the website’s loading speed.

Discussing about the term Mobile Friendly, it is all about optimizing your website for mobile devices. In the modern era of digital technology, one has to offer a great user experience on mobile devices.

And why not! Mobile phones have converted from a luxury to a necessity… 

Speaking about the eCommerce Shopify website, here are a few stats on why speeding up your Shopify website is important.

• Around 81% of Shopify users come through mobile devices.
• There’s a drop in 56% of in-store customers as, around 71% of customers increased through mobile.

Indeed, for any Shopify owner, it is important to integrate AMP pages to drive more customers to your eCommerce Shopify site. With this, the core is to optimize your pages for mobile devices by Shopify speed optimization and deliver a fast responsive site.

Analyze Web Page Performance

At last, you have to measure your website’s performance. As briefed in the starting, you can analyze your Shopify website performance on GooglePage Insights.

Now that I have told you everything regarding Shopify speed optimization, you may ask a question, What is an ideal Shopify speed score?

Over 50% can be recognized as a better speed score for your Shopify website. But if it is more than 70, it is considered an excellent score.

With this, page speed insights also give you the analyzed report citing various issues (if any) depending upon some metrics such as (image below)

Conclusion

Any eCommerce business owner aims to deliver the best services to their customers. One such service is a better user experience. 

So, to be the best at it, you have to make sure to imply Shopify Speed Optimization. 

Speeding up your website will surely help you build better visibility among your customers and search engines as well. 

The above-listed ways to increase Shopify page speed and optimize your Shopify website are tried and well trusted that you can also try to speed up Shopify website.

And if you are ready to take a step forward to optimize your website page speed, and looking for a professional, Incrementors would love to be a helping hand in your success.

With our expert and professional services, you can also up your Shopify SEO Website

FAQs

1. What factors into Shopify’s speed score?

Mainly what mainly matters is the loading speed of your website. It is how quickly your Shopify website’s page loads up. Talking about speed score, it is inversely proportional to the website’s loading speed. That is, if the loading time is more, the speed score will be less and if the loading time is less, the speed score will be more.

Others factors affecting the speed score are the Shopify theme, images, HTML codes, and mobile responsiveness. So, if you have to build a good user experience, you have to work on your Shopify website’s page load speed.

2. How can I make Shopify more visible?

Choosing a strategy and relevant channel is the first step in increasing traffic. To mention a few more strategies, they are:

• Make use of paid advertising
• Participate in social media
• Employ influencers
• Employ content marketing.
• Utilize SEO strategies

3. Do users of Shopify have success?

One of the most well-known eCommerce platforms available is Shopify. Around 81% of Shopify’s merchants are still operating profitably. This indicates that Shopify has a lot of success potential.